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Who Are You
Even more uncomfortable secrets are uncovered as you make your way back to Abel to expose the Minister. Cast * Sam Yao * Janine De Luca * Jody Marsh * Veronica McShell Plot Take The Message Home Still inside the disused bunker, Sam gives you a sitrep on the helicopter and surrounding zombies. Janine's certain you can foil the Minister's plans and rescue Veronica. You escape through a break in the horde. No Zombies Will Stop Us Janine tells Sam to get ready to transmit the incriminating recording. No-one can work out why the Minister didn't just ask to access the vault below Abel. There must be something else going on. Approaching From The East It appears Veronica took all her stuff with her to meet with the Minister - except a hidden USB stick with recordings that give Janine a bad feeling. Better Pick Up The Pace Sam queues up the next recording for you all to listen to; Janine wants to be sure of her hunch. Meanwhile things at Abel sound a bit chaotic, so you pick up the pace. Throwing Everything At You The Minister's not pulling punches as she sends in tanks. Finally Veronica's recordings reveal who she was talking to - Van Ark! Must Get This Message Out Another recording to listen to and this message reveals even more secrets about Van Ark, like how he and the Minister were married. It's now clear that Veronica was not kidnapped, but chose to leave Abel. Just... Come Home There's one last message on the USB stick, dated today. Veronica wants everyone at Abel to understand she's chosen this because she really believes she can help make a better world. Completely Back at Abel soldiers are surrounding the township, so you've got to get that transmission going. There's a small problem though, none of Sam's signals are getting out - the Minister's completely cut you off! Transcript SAM YAO: Okay, guys. The helicopter’s moving out of my camera range, heading for London. So, well, on the plus side, you’re not going to get shot in the immediate future. And on the other plus side, quite a lot of the zombies that were chasing you have now mostly, well, disintegrated. Not all of them, but quite a lot. Apparently they die when all of the waterlogged flesh falls off their bones. So, that’s interesting. Not immediately useful, but uh, interesting. JODY MARSH: And on the minus side, our genius science teenager who knows more than anyone else about the zombie virus has got into a chopper with the Minister for Recovery, who turns out to have masterminded the plot to steal your baby, create a double of Runner Five, and turn it into a zombie so she could get into a super secret military lab under Abel. Oh, and her evil henchman. JANINE DE LUCA: We will rescue Miss McShell! We will foil the Minister! We have enough information on this data drive to damn her in the eyes of the Ministry and the country. All we need to do is get it to Abel. SAM YAO: Nadia’s going through Veronica’s room now to see if she can find any info about where they might have gone. And if you’ve had enough of a breather, there’s a good gap in the zombie horde for you to make your escape. JANINE DE LUCA: Very good, Mister Yao. Runner Four, Five, with me. We will take this message home. system beeps, door opens groan SAM YAO: Okay, well. You’re not, well, you know, losing the zombies, but you are keeping ahead of them, so that’s good. JANINE DE LUCA: Let us worry about the zoms, Mister Yao. What you must concentrate on, what is of vital importance, is to set up the systems that will broadcast this recording as widely as possible. Contact New Canton. They have a large transmitter array that will help us achieve wide coverage. We must reach London. There are good people in the Ministry. They need to know what the Minister has done. JODY MARSH: I can’t believe she was the one who tried to kill you, Five. JANINE DE LUCA: The implications are horrifying. That was years ago, not long after the start of the apocalypse. Which means the organization responsible for rebuilding human society has had corruption at its heart from the very start. SAM YAO: But why? Why would she have done it? JANINE DE LUCA: She wanted access to Section Z-92. If we learn what’s in there, we may learn her motivation. SAM YAO: But if she’d have wanted to get in there, she’s the Minister! She could have just asked you, and you’d have said yes, wouldn’t you, Janine? JANINE DE LUCA: There must be some piece of the puzzle we don’t yet understand. Still, we must come home, and no zombies will stop us. Come along, runners. Run! blares JODY MARSH: Sam, what’s going on? What are those alarms? SAM YAO: No, no, it’s fine. No big deal. Just started a few minutes ago. I probably just leaned on something. It’s just, well, you know, irritating. I’m uh, trying to get hold of Jack and Eugene, see if they know how to shut it off. Uh no, but listen, Nadia was searching Veronica’s room. Veronica packed up all of her things. Well, you know, all her ten incredibly neat possessions. And she’s taken all her research notes. Sigrid probably told her to bring them. But Nadia found this, pushed to the back of a drawer. Veronica must have forgotten it in the rush. JANINE DE LUCA: Mister Yao, I know this is a stressful situation, but please try to remember that we can’t actually see what you’re pointing at. SAM YAO: Ah, right. Yeah. It’s a USB stick with audio recordings on it. Do you think we should listen to them? JANINE DE LUCA: Miss McShell has been in close contact with the Minister. If these recordings can give us any clues about where the Minister might have taken her, it is our duty to listen! SAM YAO: Okay, right. Well, this is the first one. It’s old, dated before day zero. Hold on, let me just uh, okay - plays VERONICA MCSHELL: Hello! It’s Veronica McShell here. I expect you knew that already from my name on the back of the envelope. It feels quite funny talking to you like this. But you’re right that getting into the habit of taking my notes via an audio recording will be more helpful for experimental work. And I’m so grateful and so flattered that you think any of my ideas might be useful to you. When I saw you lecture at the Royal Institution, I was almost too afraid to speak to you. I’m so glad I did. Your work is just – it’s amazing! I’ve read all your papers. The way you think is so exciting! throat I know I’m young, but I agree with you. This work is for young people. I’ve looked up some more of the papers I mentioned on ?, and I’m enclosing them. You can trust me on security. We never know who might be listening in - the NSA, or anyone, I suppose - so it’s better not to e-mail. I’m sending this package to your home address, like you said. The ? work is a few years old now. I know about it because my father was interested in their novel methods of statistical analysis, which suggested that the telomeres – laughs Oh, you’ll see what I mean when you read it. I don’t need to tell you. Please write back. I really want to hear what you think of it. If it’s helpful - ends SAM YAO: Huh. JODY MARSH: Is that it? SAM YAO: It’s the end of the first recording. JODY MARSH: But who was she talking to? JANINE DE LUCA: I begin to have a rather unpleasant idea. Please queue up more of the recordings, Mister Yao. Meanwhile, Five, Four, another group of the jaw wired zombies is approaching from the east. We must speed up. blares JANINE DE LUCA: We’re outpacing the zombies for now. Mister Yao, play us the next recording, please. JODY MARSH: Not going to share your suspicions with us? JANINE DE LUCA: I prefer facts to suspicion. SAM YAO: Alright. Here comes the next file. plays VERONICA MCSHELL: I have some very interesting results. You’ll see them on the files on this drive. I can’t thank you enough for the introduction to the staff here at the Natural History Museum. They have managed to entirely smooth things over with my school. I know the teachers were very impressed by the letter from you, too. They called my parents in for a meeting to tell them you’d said I was precisely the kind of student Cambridge is looking for, and that you’d advised that I prepare to apply next year! My parents are being very strange about the whole thing, in fact. I would have expected them to be delighted, but they kept talking about normal things that a girl my age should be doing. I’ve told them I could go away on a Girl Guide camp, which seems to have helped them feel better about it all. They still think I’m a member. laughs If it’s alright with you, I’d love to see the progress you’ve made in your human testing, and I want to take you up on your promise to show me over your labs. ends SAM YAO: I don’t get it. Who’s she talking to? JANINE DE LUCA: Give me the Abel sitrep. SAM YAO: Oh, it’s fine. Basically fine. Nothing you need to worry about until you’re home and clear. JODY MARSH: Sam? SAM YAO: Well, it’s possible some shutters came down unexpectedly, trapping Owen in the armory. But if that did happen, we’re dealing with it. JANINE DE LUCA: He’ll be fine. He has sixty minutes of air in there… I suppose we’d better pick up the pace. Come along, runners. SAM YAO: Guys, I’m picking up movement long range. Looks like trucks coming in from the north. JANINE DE LUCA: Yes, that makes sense. Are New Canton ready with the transmission relay? SAM YAO: Ready as soon as you get back here. JANINE DE LUCA: So play us the next of Miss McShell’s recordings. I suspect there is useful intel here for us. plays VERONICA MCSHELL: I very much hope this reaches you. I know you said Rofflenet has secure channels, but I can’t help worrying about the robustness of the system. I’ll make this short, and if you could send me a message in return to let me know you received it, we can continue. I suppose the purpose of this message is, well… I mainly wanted to thank you. Your recommendation to take up the offer from the arboreal research center was very good. I understand why you were unwilling to have me work in your labs, although I admit to some frustration. But I think I can do useful work here. All I’ll say for now is that your hypotheses about the blue flowers seem to be absolutely correct. It’s extraordinary that they’ve apparently gone uncultivated for so long, but whatever Comansys may have done with them, their effects on the zombies seem indisputable. I really think we may learn some fascinating things here about human brain chemistry, Professor Van Ark. I’m grateful, again, for the suggestion. ends JODY MARSH: She was in touch with Van Ark. The Van Ark. Our, you know, mortal enemy Van Ark. That guy who was trying to make people live forever, which apparently he had to do by killing a load of people. SAM YAO: Bloody hell! Veronica! Bloody hell, she never even said! JANINE DE LUCA: Yes, well, she wouldn’t have done. Are there more recordings? SAM YAO: Yeah, two more. Though ah, guys. That movement from the north? That’s armored trucks. Soldiers. I think Sigrid’s throwing everything she has at you. JANINE DE LUCA: Then we must hurry. JANINE DE LUCA: Good work on point, Five. We’ve managed to slip past those soldiers to the west. SAM YAO: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a lot of soldiers. JANINE DE LUCA: Play the next recording, Mister Yao. Much that we need to know will be here. plays VERONICA MCSHELL: Professor, I have a request, and I know – I understand the need for secrecy. You’ve explained to me very clearly how much depends on your wife not drawing attention to her connection with you. I’m fully in support of your policy of removing books that mention that link from the remaining libraries, and even censoring Rofflenet copies of Wikipedia. I even understand her policy regarding former friends and political journalists. I know how it would look: patient zero came from your labs. It would fatally undermine your work and hers if your relationship were known. People can be so stupid and short-sighted. They think there are kinds of science one shouldn’t do. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that your wife is right. There is good to be taken from this apocalypse, as she says! Good for the human race, good for the planet. That’s why I’d like so much to meet her. Once you’ve dealt with your former lab colleagues, I would be quite happy to pretend that I’d never heard of any connection with you. I would just call her the Minister of Recovery, like everyone else does. ends JANINE DE LUCA: Well. SAM YAO: The Minister was - JODY MARSH: - married to Van Ark? JANINE DE LUCA: Yes. That would explain why she didn’t simply come to Abel. She feared being recognized. And I’m sorry to say there’s now no doubt about why Veronica got into that helicopter. She was not kidnapped, or duped. She knew what she was doing. And I suspect she knew what she was doing in leaving these recordings for us to find. She’s trying to tell us who she is. I think she’s been trying to tell us for a long time. gunshots Ah yes, that would be the Minister’s soldiers attempting to hunt us down. Faster now! We must get this message out to the world! SAM YAO: Okay, guys. I’ve got you on long distance cams. You’re getting close. Now, there’s one more recording left on the USB, time stamped today. Do you want to hear it? JODY MARSH: Play it, Sam. I don’t know how much worse it can get. plays VERONICA MCSHELL: So, now you know. And I suppose you’re upset. I can just imagine what Sam’s saying. But if you’d spoken to Sigrid the way I have, if you understood the work she was doing, even the work Professor Van Ark was doing! I – I know, of course I do, that many of his acts were reprehensible, but his aims… and in this world we live in now, I think that ends do justify means, at least when those ends are saving the entire human race. The whole zombie virus was a terrible error, an interaction between two experimental treatments that should never have meant. But now it’s happened, we have to work out how to make the best of the changed world! Honestly, we’re both on the same side, we really are. I know you might not believe that, and I’ve had to set up a few things to go wrong in Abel, just to keep you busy while I got away. You’re all so emotional. Sigrid wondered what you were going to find at Brightwater. She warned me that I might have to leave in a hurry. I know that with what’s happened, you’d want me to stop working with her. But I don’t want that, so please don’t try to come after me. I’m not in any danger, and I’m not in any doubt. I’m going to continue my work with Sigrid, and together, we’re going to save everyone who’s left. That’s a promise. And Sigrid – she won’t hurt you if you give her what she wants. She wasn’t even going to hurt your baby! I just hope – I hope we can talk again when this is all over. I hope by then, you’ll understand. ends SAM YAO: Come home, guys. Just come home. siren, gates lowering JODY MARSH: At least the soldiers have stopped shooting at us. JANINE DE LUCA: They’re spreading out, evenly spaced to form a perimeter around Abel and New Canton. I’d say it’s almost certain they are Sigrid’s. No doubt she hopes to contain us before we spread the news of her misdeeds, not to mention her relationship to Van Ark. She may also be hoping that she can still salvage the contents of the laboratory under Abel, or perhaps even bargain with us. We will not bargain with her. Mister Yao, are we ready to begin transmitting this data file? JODY MARSH: You can’t stop the signal! SAM YAO: Actually, maybe you can. JODY MARSH: What do you mean? SAM YAO: Well, I’ve been pinging Mullins, and Jack and Eugene, and any of the settlements within a fifty mile radius. Only New Canton’s responding, and they also can’t ping the outside world. JANINE DE LUCA: Of course. Of course! Why did Veronica tell us about Van Ark and the Minister? It simply gives us more ammunition against them. She told us because she knew it didn’t matter, that we wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else! SAM YAO: Our radio signals haven’t been getting through. And Rofflenet… I don’t know what she’s done, but that’s blocked, too. JODY MARSH: So what you’re saying is Sigrid’s cut us off. SAM YAO: Completely. Category:Mission Category:Season Four